The sheer magnitude & constancy of deaths & injuries among young Palestinians & Kashmiris is staggering. When you then consider Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Rohingyans, Libyans, Somalians, it is overwhelming. How long will we let this barbarism go on? How can we organize & coordinate ourselves internationally to end this?

I harbor no soft spots for Democrats & haven’t voted for one since 1968 when my local precinct voted against the Vietnam War & endorsed pro-war presidential candidate Humbert Humphrey. Such unprincipled contradictions are not tolerable to me, especially over matters of war & the Palestinians. But I do not recall such raging hatred for them as there is now. Maybe the hatred for LB Johnson came close because of the Vietnam War but Bill Clinton, Carter, & Kennedy faced no such personal animosity despite their bellicose policies. Republicans did face such hatred–like Nixon, Reagan, the two Bushes. It often appears an irrational hatred, not rooted in their policies & my suspicion is that it’s because Obama is Black & Clinton a woman that hatred has crescendoed to such a fever pitch among rightwingers & among those who regard themselves as progressive. It’s just racism & misogyny enraged by seeing Blacks & women in positions of power. And that is damn repugnant. Or am I wrong?

Cindy Sheehan’s Women’s March on the Pentagon took place this last Sunday. It was a foregone conclusion that it would be small because her politics are so factional, elitist, & rooted in grandstanding rather than in building a massive inclusive social movement. She built the march on the rotting remnants of the corrupted antiwar movement which supports the Assad dictatorship & Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians & only opposes, without understanding, US intervention in Syria. Judging by the endorsers & speakers at the rally, it was mostly a gathering of Assadist forces in the US. It’s hard, if not impossible, to garner massive public support, even in the US, for a repressive dictatorship carpet bombing civilians & hanging thousands of dissidents in its jails. She also built the march in counterposition to the Women’s Marches of 2017 & 2018 where over three-million women marched on every continent raising every demand under the sun which relates to peace, justice, & women’s rights. What rankled her about those marches was their inclusiveness when she–who often appears to support Trump or at least opposes protests against him–wants Democrats excluded from marches. As if there were proprietary rights to social movements. She has a sectarian, elitist, perspective which is dead-end politics.

It’s not the point to gloat over the size of Sheehan’s march which probably numbered about a thousand. What’s important is to assess the growing isolation, sectarianism, & corruption of the antiwar movement. It’s not irrelevant that among the march’s chief supporters were the “retired” CIA, FBI, State Department, & military officials (Ann Wright, Coleen Rowley, Ray McGovern) who openly admit to ongoing collaboration with CIA & other government agents. It needs to be asked how minions of US militarism ended up in 2018 leading the antiwar movement? But of course, they are leading it into oblivion. It is time to build a regenerated antiwar movement rooted in principles & international solidarity with an uncompromising, unequivocal stand against all military interventions, including those of the US, UK, Russia, Syria, Israel, India, Burma, China.

Kissinger went to pick up the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize whilst the US was bombing the hell out of North Vietnam; Suu Kyi went to pick up her 1991 Nobel & a dozen other honorifics in 2012 whilst Burma was engaged in a genocidal onslaught against the Rohingya, causing tens of thousands to flee for their lives. Even sarcasm fails to express the contempt this all deserves. Now our man PM Modi–who more than once publicly repudiated climate change & whose policies have removed all impediments to environmental plunder, including revoking the rights of tribals to forest land & approving coal mining in forests–was just given the UN Champions of the Earth award by UN chief Antonio Guterres for his contributions to environmental protection, the sole contribution being a promise to eliminate plastic bags by 2022. If Kissinger & Suu Kyi can get the Nobel for world peace despite war & genocide, why not Modi for getting into the Downward Facing Dog yoga position, chanting Om, & publicly committing India to increasing carbon emissions?

Not to be outdone by the sarcasms of the Nobel committee, South Korea just selected Modi for the 2018 Seoul Peace Prize for his contributions to world peace, for furthering democracy in India, & for his Modinomics policies which eliminate economic inequality between rich & poor in India. The 78 million homeless Indians, the 90 million living on less than US$1 a day, the 7 million slum dwellers, & the millions in the oppressed castes might have something to say about that eliminating poverty & inequality thing.

What contributions to world peace is the Seoul committee talking about? Modi’s growing military relationship with Israel? India’s growing involvement in the US war in Afghanistan? Its brutal & violent military occupation of Kashmir, including nightly hunt to kill operations & massacres of civilians? Its pogroms against Muslims orchestrated by Modi’s party the BJP? Its campaign portraying Rohingya refugees as terrorists & the deportation of seven Rohingya refugees back to the killing fields of Burma? Its growing political repression of Dalit activists in India? This award also goes way beyond sarcasm into the realms of stark raving mad & renders these peace awards more worthless than toilet paper.

Who’s next for the Nobel & Seoul Peace Prizes? Duterte? Assad? Trump? Netanyahu? General Sisi? Marx once said history repeats itself–first as tragedy & then as farce. In the barbaric phase of capitalism, it isn’t possible to tell the difference. No need to demand Modi be stripped of his awards since these award committees won’t hear of it. You have to talk to his ass when he’s leading Indian nationalists in the Downward Facing Dog position where they’re getting in contact with their inner selves. It’s the best position for burying your head in the sand.

(Photo of Modi doing the Kissing Ass asana with Trump)

It is not true that if people don’t vote for Democrats in this election they “deserve the government they get” or will be responsible for the rise of fascism in the US. Since when have politicians ever, anywhere, held back the tide of rightwing ascendancy? The majority of Americans eligible to vote don’t bother to even register. Not because they’re indifferent to the outcome but as a protest because they believe there isn’t a modicum of difference between the two parties. Not on inequality, poverty, immigration, war, genocide. Stop guilt-baiting those who don’t cling to illusions about the Democratic Party. The only way society anywhere has ever changed in a progressive way is when masses of working people enter the political arena on their own behalf. If fascism is an imminent threat in the US, it is time to mobilize by the millions, not cry wolf over routine elections for corrupt & compromised millionaires with hats full of empty promises.

“We suffer from an incurable disease called “hope.” Hope for liberation and independence. Hope for a normal life where we shall be neither heroes nor victims. Hope to see our children go to school without danger. Hope for a pregnant woman to give birth to a living baby, in a hospital, and not to a dead child in front of a military control post. Hope that our poets will see the beauty of the colour red in roses, rather than in blood. Hope that this land will recover its original name: “land of hope and peace.” Thank you for carrying with us this banner of hope.

—Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) via Rollie Mukherjee